Business View Civil & Municipal | July 2022

136 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 7 used by the school. Holt says, “Franklin Partners have been a really good development partner. Over the years, they’ve done some really nice projects in Wyoming and we’re looking forward to more good projects with Franklin Partners on what we would now call site 36, which is the site of the old GM stamping plant.” Wyoming was built as a more suburban area of Grand Rapids and did not have a downtown district, but the municipality is working toward creating one on a section of 28th Street, which is where the new city hall building and the workforce housing is located. There are also many mixed-use developments in the works for retail, restaurants and office space. Deputy City Manager John McCarter says creating this downtown district may help bring more life to the city. He notes, “Downtowns, historically, have been a destination that as time went on, as malls came to dominate our spending patterns, really were left behind. This breathes life back into that section of 28th Street. We really think it will be a regional destination and bring this part of our community back to life.” The city is also very environmentally conscious. They take their water from Lake Michigan, which is about 30 miles away. The pipeline also provides water to every town in between and the city charges them a wholesale fee. Wyoming is now in the process of building a redundant pipeline to ensure the city is never without water. During maintenance or an emergency, the other line can be used. They are also adding another intake about a mile out into the lake, again to ensure that if any systems with the first intake fail that the city continues to receive water. The wastewater, or as McCarter likes to call it “clean water” facility uses UV technologies to clean the water and return it to the lake. Although the city does not currently have EV charging stations it is looking into them, but there are privately-owned chargers in the